[Game Review] Sword of the Stars: The Pit – Mind Games (PC)

Kerberos Productions has recently released a new DLC for their roguelike Sword of the Stars: The Pit. I had played Sword of the Stars: The Pit around the time of its release, and I highly enjoyed it for what it was: a small game that could be picked up and played. The new DLC, titled Mind Games, adds a bit of content to the base game that I think players would enjoy provided they enjoyed The Pit.

Mind Games adds two new classes to the game: the ranger and the psion. The ranger functions as a middle ground between the marine and the scout class. She has aspects of both such as the marine’s combat strength and the scout’s utility but not excelling at either. The psion focuses on utilizing psychic powers and abilities, which have been added by Mind Games (Get it? Mind Games? Psychic powers? Dohoho.) The psion functions similarly to the marine except his combat skills revolve around powers and energy weapons rather than using conventional ballistic weapons like the marine. I really enjoyed using both classes since they provided a fresh way to play the game. The ranger is strong enough to hold her own against monsters, an occasional issue when playing the scout, and had enough utility to pick locks or open weapon lockers, which the marine struggled at. Psionic powers are satisfying to use and have a lot of utility whether it be through healing yourself, detecting the presence of enemies, or just dealing damage to faraway targets without having to expend ammo.

New enemies, recipes, and levels are available in your journey. I encountered several enemies that I hadn’t seen before. One of them was a wolf that would go invisible so it would force you to manually aim your shots or else you wouldn’t be able to target it, and another enemy was a half-spider half-brain creature that would deal heavy poison damage to you if it came into contact with your character. These are only a few examples of the many new enemies that you can encounter in Mind Games. New levels are cool too, but it doesn’t really change much besides the environments, so I don’t think it’s as huge of a deal compared to dealing with new enemies. New recipes are available for the player to craft items out of as well, so that will provide more combinations for players to unlock.

While Mind Games isn’t a huge DLC expansion akin to those released for Civilization V, I do think that the content provided is well worth the base price tag of 5 dollars since the content will provide a lot more variation and replayability for the game. If you enjoyed Sword of the Stars: The Pit and want some extra content, then definitely check out Mind Games.